COMMUNITY COLUMN  We know the answer to the achievement gap, but we’ll never accept it

Ray Buursma

Wednesday

Feb 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMFeb 29, 2012 at 6:24 AM

“Making students from low-income families competitive academically with their more affluent counterparts is the issue at hand. This should be a challenge not just for our professional educators and school board members but for all of us, including our local chambers of commerce, foundations and community organizations. Who will call

the meeting and lead a community effort on this essential issue?”

“Making students from low-income families competitive academically with their more affluent counterparts is the issue at hand. This should be a challenge not just for our professional educators and school board members but for all of us, including our local chambers of commerce, foundations and community organizations. Who will call
the meeting and lead a community effort on this essential issue?”

This question was posed by The Sentinel’s editorial board a week ago. The answer is simple: No one will. The explanation is a bit
more complicated.

If you are unaware of this issue, here’s a synopsis. Recently, the Michigan Department of Education released its MEAP results. As usual, districts with higher socioeconomic clientele fared better than districts serving working class and poorer students.

Did anyone expect otherwise?

But back to The Sentinel’s question. Who will lead an effort to help children from low-income families compete academically with their more affluent counterparts?

Again, no one, but consider the explanation of this disturbing answer.

The most important factor in a student’s academic achievement is his brain, but the development of a brain and its potential for learning occurs in its first few years of life, long before any teacher has access to it.

The problem is brains of young children are not equally stimulated. Parents who are upper-class professionals speak three times more often with their children than poor parents speak with their kids.

Children of parents who are professionals play more board games, solve more puzzles and visit more zoos and museums than their working-class counterparts.

All these experiences, all this stimulation and all these interactions not only nourish the young brain, they set the stage for its future learning potential as well.

The brains of children who finger-paint, build towers from blocks and study picture books while parents repeatedly ask “What does the cow say?” have a distinct advantage over the brains of children who are plopped in a playpen or placed in front of a television for hours
on end.

The fact of the matter is the development of children’s brains is related to their stimulation in early life. Most children in low -income families don’t experience the same stimulation as their
wealthier peers.

This is not news. The founders of Head Start, a program designed to
develop the brains of preschool children, knew this long ago. Their program and its results were impressive.

But we live in a time when “less government” is the daily mantra. Head Start costs money to run, and we know Americans are overtaxed.

At least that’s what we are told. We are also told government programs are intrusions into our lives.

Can you imagine the outcry if a government employee were to greet parents leaving a maternity ward and say, “I can provide you with tips and tools to help develop your child’s intellect. I can give you books and puzzles, blocks and balls, and show you how to stimulate the neurons in your baby’s brain. If you’d like, I can visit every three months to give you more toys, books and tips.”

Oh my! Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh would go crazy and their cries of government waste and indoctrination would ring throughout the land.

And so, editorial board, while I commend you for addressing a tough issue, I chuckle at your naivete. Sorry, but no one will tackle this issue, and not only will America get what it has gotten, things will only get worse as more families continue to drop from the middle class to the working class.

— Contact Ray Buursma through The Sentinel at newsroom@hollandsentinel.com.

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